Miki is back!

Miki is back! He looks fine except for having about a bazillion burrs on him (especially on his ears) from a nasty weed around here called burdock. I'm taking him to the groomer for an emergency trim very shortly.

How did we find him, you ask? Well, I was backing my truck out of our driveway to go take posters to all the places in the county where someone might take a stray dog. Suddenly two kids appeared behind me, waving like crazy. When I hopped out to find out why, they told me they'd seen Miki – and they gave me a credible description of him. They told me exactly where they saw him, and then they had to take off for school. I started walking around the neighborhood anywhere and everywhere within a couple hundred yards of where they spotted him – I got there just ten minutes or so after they saw him, so I figured he couldn't have gone far. After about 15 minutes of hollering my head off, there was no sign of him.

I went back inside our house to talk it over with Debbie – specifically, to consider whether it made more sense to keep looking for him locally (as we couldn't be certain that the kids' sighting was either credible or actually Miki), or to carry on with the poster distribution. We decided to keep searching. I opened the door into our garage to head out (the big garage door was already open) and ... there was Miki, right at the bottom of the steps into the garage. I called him, incredulously, and he actually ran away a bit, frightened, but then recognized me and came inside. Got him! I figure he must have heard me calling, came toward the sound of my voice, but never started barking himself. I was inside talking with Debbie for no more than 2 or 3 minutes, so he must have been right behind me.

Phew!

The poor fellow is massively covered with burdock burrs, though. The groomers are facing quite a challenge with him. And now it's time for me to go.